Tuesday, Jan 24, 2017, 5:00 am

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(Photo: thedoctorwillseeyounow.com)

The GMO labeling issue has quieted down some but there is still plenty to discuss. On January 19, the USDA proposed its latest definition of genetically modified food, for labeling purposes, and it includes loopholes for gene editing. However, it’s not uncommon for reasonable people to imagine that GMO labeling is a sideshow to the real business of the food movement. After all, most GMO foods and GMO crops are visually indistinguishable from non-GMOs, and tiny non-GMO labels can look pretty irrelevant on the side of a soda bottle containing whole cupfuls of sugar.

Granted, they wrote “important but parochial,” but qualifying the significance of GMO labeling in any way was a mistake.​

The first issue is that GMOs are legally distinct from non-GMO crop varieties. They possess an enhanced legal status that has enabled GMOs to become a gushing profit center for agribusiness. These rights not only allow their owners to steer farmers’ herbicide use, which also increases profits, but also allows them to legally prevent independent research that would otherwise contradict their advertising claims. The share price of Monsanto reached $142 in 2008, reflecting the enormous profitability of massively increasing seed prices on the back of GMO introductions.

Those profits have in turn fuelled a set of key agribusiness activities. One was the acquisition of nearly the entire independent global seed business, which now resides in very few hands. The second was a cluster of enhanced PR and lobbying activities that were necessary to defend GMOs. Rather than hide in the shadows, agribusiness corporations needed to come out swinging in defense of the indefensible. This necessitated, among other things, a much higher degree of control over teaching content and research at public universities. Thus, GMOs special legal status has enabled an unprecedented ability to control both the present and the future of agriculture.

Conflating science with progress

GMOs are also conflated with science and therefore progress. They have the intellectual role of presenting agribusiness as the innovative and dynamic frontier of agriculture, in contrast to those people who base their efforts on ecological diversity, local expertise, or deep knowledge. This cutting edge image is key to the agribusiness business model of reaping tax breaks and subsidies.

A woman holds a sign in support of California Prop 37—the 2012 ballot measure that called for the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. (Photo: Pintrest.com)

All around the world, taxpayer money supports and subsidizes agribusiness, which is existentially dependent on these benefits. In the final analysis, however, the GMOs-as-progress argument is circular: Agribusiness is innovative because it uses GMOs and GMOs show how innovative they are. It’s smoke and mirrors, but politicians fall for it every day, delivering massive transfers of wealth every year from the public to the private sector.

The biological truth of GMOs in the field is equally disturbing. The virtual disappearance of Monarch butterflies has received much attention and there are three leading explanations regarding the cause. The loss of their larval host plants, milkweeds, to farmland is one possibility; poisoning of their caterpillar larvae after consuming insecticide-filled pollen from Bt insect-resistant GMOs is a second; and toxicity from the neonicotinoid pesticides used to treat GMO seeds is the third. The first two both stem directly or indirectly from GMO use in agricultural fields. Milkweeds grow in and around crops. Before GMOs, they could not be eradicated and now they can.) Most likely, however, all three of these causes are a factor and GMO agriculture is likely decimating many other species too.

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is a milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Monarchs are lovely, but they are not otherwise special. Their significance is as sentinels. Planting milkweeds and pollinator way stations to specifically preserve a sentinel species does not rescue an agricultural ecosystem, but it will mask the symptoms. Agribusiness is right now hoping that no one will notice the difference, and that by bringing back monarchs it can obscure the facts of their killing fields. Internationally, GMOs threaten to transform agriculture in countries like India where millions of people who make a living by laboring in fields are at risk of getting displaced by herbicide-tolerant crops, such as mustard.

"Donald Trump won’t make it worse because it can’t be worse"

At the human consumption end of the food chain, if you live in the United States, no one is protecting you from potential GMO health hazards. Makers of GMO crop varieties don’t even have to notify the FDA of a new product. And if the maker deems the product is not a pesticide, they don’t have to notify the EPA either. Donald Trump won’t make it worse because it can’t be worse. This is non-partisan contempt for public health.

What are the potential health hazards? One important example is the famous (or infamous) rat study of NK603 corn by the French research group under professor Gilles-Eric Séralini. To date, it is the only long-term study of the effects of GMOs on a mammal. If you ignore the tumors that most people focused on, the study also found major kidney and liver dysfunction in the treated animals. This dysfunction was evident from biochemical measurements and visually apparent under the microscope. The results, however, are of no interest to U.S. regulators, even in principle, because they fall between jurisdictions. Nonetheless, from this we can conclude that GMOs—the leading edge of industrial agriculture’s business model—are often directly and indirectly harmful.

The question is not of GMO safety, however, but whether or not they should be labeled. Imagine that organic food was not allowed to be labeled. Would there be such an organized and powerful challenge to industrial food? What labeling does for the agriculture and food system is to allow the public to express its dismay and disagreement with the direction of corporate agriculture and assert their democratic rights to protect themselves. Labeling allows the public to engage with specific policies and products within the vast complexity of the food system and, in real time, push back in a focused way against corruption and dishonesty. There aren’t too many chances to do that in America today.

Excerpt from "Food and More: Expanding the Movement for the Trump Era"—published Jan. 16, 2017 on CivilEats.com.)

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Jonathan R. Latham, PhD, is co-founder and executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, which is the publisher of Independent Science News (independentsciencenews.org). He has published scientific papers in disciplines as diverse as plant ecology, virology, genetics, and RNA biology.

Also, let me point out that habitat destruction is the number one threat to all pollinators. Farming fence row to fence row has a bigger impact than anything else--and that goes for all types of farming. The same is said for suburbs. When houses occupy what used to be open space--where exactly are these milkweeds going to grow?

By attacking farmers, this distracts from what actually needs to be done.

Posted by Damo on 2017-02-01 08:28:03

Why to you respond when all you have is industry troll drool?

Posted by Goldfinger on 2017-01-31 21:59:07

LOLPure Comedy!!!!

Posted by FarmersSon63 on 2017-01-31 20:09:45

Sorry. I'm not into the bias in your argument. We can all see that you represent the big ag big GMO-pesticide agenda.

Posted by Goldfinger on 2017-01-31 19:46:33

Do you disagree that there are over 200 pesticides used by farmers?Do you believe that any US pesticide or seed company can force it's customers to buy from them?Do you actually believe that any pesticide manufacturer or seed company can keep anyone from conducting independent research on their products?When you answer NO to all of these questions you have officially proved that the author is 100% incorrect like I stated.

Posted by FarmersSon63 on 2017-01-31 19:33:01

No. It looks like E. hit the nail square on the head. Industry commenters like you can't see past your PR script books.

Posted by Goldfinger on 2017-01-31 19:10:18

Yeah, making sense sounds gibberish to wacko activists like you.

Posted by FarmersSon63 on 2017-01-31 18:39:21

You are reducing yourself to gibberish again fake farmer.

Posted by E. Sandwich on 2017-01-31 14:13:20

There are over 200 pesticides to choose from.No company can legally hold a gun to consumers head.That is like saying having sugar in Coca-Cola gives them an unfair advantage, thus forcing consumers to buy from them.LOLPure Comedy!!!

Posted by FarmersSon63 on 2017-01-30 18:22:32

Sure thing, fake farmer. Black is white and up is down too. The people are not the ignorant suckers you think they are because hey are a lot smarter than you.

Posted by Duncan DeBunkerman on 2017-01-27 21:40:42

omg,lol.

Posted by patzagame on 2017-01-27 21:14:48

wrong,its you.

Posted by patzagame on 2017-01-27 21:07:58

Great perspective.

Posted by patzagame on 2017-01-27 21:07:07

The author Jona Latham says: "These rights not only allow their owners to steer farmers’ herbicide use, which also increases profits, but also allows them to legally prevent independent research that would otherwise contradict their advertising claims. "This statement is 100% false.What world does this woman live in?

Posted by FarmersSon63 on 2017-01-27 18:04:43

The industry operatives are sure out today trying to obfuscate the truth in this great piece.

They are again proving that industry junk pseudo-science must be protected from real science and the truth at all costs.

The amount of misinformation in this article is overwhelming, but I'd like to address just one issue: declines in Monarch butterflies. Yes, it's true that loss of their larval host plants, milkweeds to farmland is one possibility, but this isn't a GMO effect. The other arguments were: "poisoning of their caterpillar larvae after consuming insecticide-filled pollen from Bt insect-resistant GMOs .... and toxicity from the neonicotinoid pesticides used to treat GMO seeds." There are no Bt milkweeds, and neither adult nor larval Monarch butterflies eat pollen. so this is nonsense. Neonicotinoid pesticides are used, especially as seed treatments, on quite a few types of plants, but this has nothing to do whether they are GMO or not. And is there any indication that neonicotinoid pesticides are affecting Monarch butterflies? I'm not aware of any.

Posted by Robert Howd on 2017-01-25 19:41:52

Yeah but piece of shit marketing whores don't care about facts when they can fear monger and manipulate to make a buck

Posted by alex on 2017-01-24 18:17:19

The vile lying scum bag that wrote this article is fully aware they are full of shit, but they don't care as there is money to be made

Posted by alex on 2017-01-24 18:16:21

Starts off with nonsense. NonGMO crops are patented as well, and not all GMOs are. NonGMO crops are herbicide tolerant too, and not all GMOs are. Latham knows this, as it has been pointed out to him many times over the years.

Posted by Stephan on 2017-01-24 05:39:44

Old johnny really knows how to spread that organic fertilizer. Hopefully one day he will wake up and realize that misinformation like his iS the problem.

Posted by Gmo Roberts on 2017-01-24 05:24:58

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